


forces of nature

by vienna_salvatori



Category: Rusty Quill Gaming (Podcast)
Genre: Aromantic Oscar Wilde (Rusty Quill Gaming), Gen, M/M, Queerplatonic Zolf Smith/Oscar Wilde, aroaceingtheline2021
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-27
Updated: 2021-02-27
Packaged: 2021-03-18 14:27:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,371
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29735265
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vienna_salvatori/pseuds/vienna_salvatori
Summary: AroAceing the Line day 6: loveZolf understands that forces of nature are never going to love him back, and he's perfectly fine with that.
Relationships: Zolf Smith & Oscar Wilde
Comments: 4
Kudos: 28
Collections: AroAceing the Line





	forces of nature

Zolf remembers what it was like to love the sea, knowing full well it could never return the favour.

Except, then it did.

Things were simpler, before. Back when he was a two-legged dwarf in the navy and the concept of _big fuck off metal kraken_ was so utterly ridiculous it never would have even occurred to him. Back when the Poseidon lot were a vague irritant to put up with in port, and gods were a problem for more important people than him.

He’d loved the sea from the moment he laid eyes on it, wide open skies nothing like the mines he was expected to spend his life in. Wild and dangerous and free. He’d never be trapped, out on the water. Not like the mines, closing in over his head, forcing him into a role that had been laid out for him before he’d even been born. The ocean could be for him what the mines were for Feryn, he’d thought, a place to call home and a purpose to pour his heart into. It didn’t matter if he never got a response, or if no one else ever understood. Home was home was home and you loved it even if it didn’t necessarily love you back. That was how it worked.

Then it all went wrong. Then it all went _right_ , Poseidon sank power into his bones, and when Zolf called on the ocean, it answered. It _cared_. Zolf… didn’t know what to think of that, most of the time. Geography wasn’t supposed to care about people. Abstract concepts of freedom from familial expectations and guilt weren’t supposed to care about people. Except, apparently, sometimes the gods that hold dominion over them do, and for reason or reasons unknown, he was the lucky winner. He survived everything the ocean threw at him, mostly whole, and also now apparently a cleric for a religion he knew literally nothing about except tridents and drowning people sometimes.

There were supposed to be rules for this, he was sure, but he wasn’t entirely certain what they consisted of. All he really knew was that there was a deep-seated hunger in his bones, a storm eternally mere moments from bearing down on his shoulders, and while the pressure never really left, if he fought enough and killed enough and drowned enough, other people in the water or he himself floundering, it didn’t matter- well, sometimes the mercurial moods abated just a little. It was enough to breathe, and the power of it- the knowledge that he’d been chosen, that Poseidon cared for him in some bizarre, incomprehensible way- kept him going. Kept him moving, job to job, town to town, back to British shores for the first time in years. The wind was at his back and it carried him home.

But-

But he was always riding the storm front, waiting for the crosswind to blow him off course. Once that happened, Zolf knew, he was undoubtedly going to sink, and people don’t survive storms like this. Especially not when the storm is specifically out to get _you_.

* * *

  
Sure enough, it went wrong. Poseidon proved to be altogether too demanding (maybe the _entire ocean_ was a bit ambitious for one dwarf) and they. Um. Broke up? It feels petty, putting such lowly terminology on something as literally sacred as the relation between a cleric and their god. That is what happened, though, so the terminology works.

Aim a bit lower, Zolf had decided, newly legless and still coming to terms with the whole Harlequin thing his brother had going on. Relationships are all well and good, at least once you’ve sorted yourself out a bit, but _maybe_ don’t go for a wild force of nature. Nothing quite so dramatic.

Then, of course, everything went wrong again, because he went and fell in love with a very _Wilde_ force of nature indeed.

* * *

Wilde can’t love him back.

He knows it well before they actually have the conversation. In some way, he knew it the moment they met, Wilde sprawled in Hamid’s too-small furniture like he owned the place, and he met Zolf’s eyes with a calculated smirk and barbed quips shooting from his tongue. Zolf didn’t care, then- the true nature of the dramatic bastard in front of him only mattered inasmuch as how quickly he could convince the man to leave him alone. Except he kept coming _back_ , and Zolf began to understand more. He understood when he felt the hum of Wilde’s magic back in Paris- the power of it spoke to a heart and soul being poured into the artistry, in a way that left no room for anything else. Zolf respected that, even if he’d never admit as much. He grew even more certain when Wilde showed up again, magic bound, all support gone, but still commanding the world around him as easily as if it was an illusion of his own creation. Wilde’s personality was larger than life- Zolf had realised _that_ on their first meeting- but it was becoming readily apparent that the rest of him was, too. He had a vision, this man, and he was going to force it into existence with nothing but his silver tongue and slippery mind, if he needed to. He cared on a scale most wouldn’t be able to contemplate, let alone quantify. Wilde’s heart was sworn to far bigger things than love and romance, and Zolf respected him, even admired him, for it.

That didn’t change, even as the months ticked by, even as the world plunged further and further into chaos. Even as Wilde builds his walls higher and higher with every betrayal, even as glimpses of the man’s true artistry became fewer and further between, Zolf still admires him.

Wilde holds their crumbling resistance together through sheer force of will. He may as well be a god, these days, forcing miracles, snatching stalemates from the jaws of defeat. Gods do not love. Zolf doesn’t want them to, not anymore- he felt that, once, and he was nearly crushed under the weight of it.

Zolf loves Wilde, not at all like he had loved the ocean. Zolf loves Wilde the person not the god. Zolf loves him for the dark circles under his eyes before he puts his concealer on in the morning, the slant of his shoulders as he paces back and forth, the inverse relationship between the quantity and quality of his puns when he’s tired, the way his elegant fingers dance across everyone’s shoulders the day they’re released from quarantine. Zolf loves him for the way he hums under his breath when he helps wash the dishes, for murmured conversations over late-night drinks, for the feel of hands which shouldn’t have had to do a days’ hard labour stitching his wounds with dextrous skill.

Zolf loves Wilde, and he doesn’t expect- can’t expect- the feelings to be returned. He’s perfectly okay with that.

The strength of Poseidon was good to have, sure, but without the thunder in his voice, Zolf is fine. He had loved the sea for its power, nothing else, and there’s plenty of power to go round these days. The only issue with letting go was the fear of being pulled under. Here…

Wilde is going to try and solve all this, throw himself at the problem with all the righteous anger of a slighted god, and he’s going to do it again, and again, and again, until he’s got nothing left. Zolf… Zolf is self-aware enough to know he can’t fix this, and selfish enough to know he can’t leave Wilde to it, not anymore.

Zolf can’t fix the world, he knows that. Maybe the man standing beside him can. He’s certainly going to try, and try, and try, and tear himself to pieces in the process, and Zolf-

-Zolf might not be able to solve the big picture problem, but he can be here for Wilde. He can pour all his love and hope into supporting him. For this task- for Wilde- he feels like those resources might be infinite.

He can’t fix the world himself, but maybe he can carry some of the burden for the one who can.


End file.
